Microsoft’s quest to make users drop Windows XP continues

As the date of the scheduled retirement of Windows XP – arguably one of Microsoft’s most popular products ever – draws near, the company continues its quest to make as many users as possible migrate to a newer version of the OS, preferably to Windows 8.1.

The plan was been on for years, but the majority of XP users have failed to make the move for their own reasons, and Microsoft has been trying to jumpstart the shift in a number of ways.

Recently they tried to recruit tech-savvy users to help their less knowledgeable friends and family upgrade to a newer Windows version, and if they can’t (computer is too old), to buy a new PC and a new OS.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, most users experienced this call as a poorly disguised sales pitch, and balked at making the change. The fact that the company didn’t even provide a good upgrade utility was an additional stumbling block.

The latter problem was solved the day before yesterday, when the company announced that it had partnered with Laplink to provide Windows XP users with a free data migration tool which will copy their files and settings from their Windows XP PC to a new device running any of the later Windows versions.

They also added that Windows XP Home or Professional edition users that don’t make the change will be reminded to do it once a month starting on March 8, 2014 via a pop-up alert that will offer a link to the company’s Windows XP End of Support website:

But that’s not all. If they continue to use the OS, and also use Security Essentials – for which, by the way, Microsoft will continue to deliver antimalware signatures until July 14, 2015 – they can look forward to being “pestered” via another channel.

Once Security Essentials is updated to the latest version (4.5), Windows XP users will continue seeing warnings in the program and it the system tray that their computer is “potentially unprotected.”

Well, there is still another month to go until the offending OS version stops being supported, and I’m looking forward to seeing what other ideas Microsoft will come up with next.